The Tsar’s Bride Opera returns to the Bolshoi’s stage after a short interval

MOSCOW, February 09, 5:15 /ITAR-TASS/. The Tsar’s Bride, the most popular opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, will reappear on the Bolshoi Theatre’s stage on February 22.

Conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, People’s Artist of Russia, will conduct the first rehearsal with an orchestra on Sunday. After that, the cast will be approved for the opera which was under a threat of being disrupted quite recently.

On December 2 last year, Vasiliy Sinaiskiy, the theatre’s former musical director and chief conductor, submitted his resignation which was accepted on December 3.

The Tsar’s Bride was one of Sinaiskiy’s unfinished projects. Bolshoi’s newly-appointed Director-General Vladimir Urin rushed to search for a new conductor. He found maestro Gennady Rozhdestvenskiy during a guest tour in Paris on January 4.

He will conduct the orchestra during the first night performances in Moscow and during guest tours in Vienna and New York where the opera will be performed in the form of a concert.

The Tsar’s Bride is one of the most popular and frequently performed operas by Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer had a very special feeling for it.

“Out of many of my operas I love ‘The Snow Maiden’ and ‘The Tsar’s Bride’ more than others,” Rimsky-Korsakov used to say. He started it in February 1898 and finished the music scores ten months later.

The Tsar’s Bride saw the first night on October 22, 1899.

The opera occupied a special place in the Bolshoi’s repertoire. Its first production was staged in 1916. The Bolshoi saw six Tsar’s Bride productions in various years. The opera obtained the features of grand imperial style on the Bolshoi’s stage and remained one of the main productions of the theatre’s Russian repertoire for the next hundred years. The current seventh production is being staged by Israeli director Yulia Pevzner.